The letter ran as follows:
Dear Henry,—I am going to write to you all about us boys and our doings, and tell you all about a great plot that all of us are going to have. I received your letter of last month safe and sound, and I expect you expected to hear from me right off. But, Henry, I’ve had all sorts of things to do, and just now we boys are trying for a prize. I expect it will be a beauty. I would not write till it’s all over, but we boys want me to write to you right off to come down and help us in a plot we’ve got made up to impose on one of our number. I’ve been puzzling over my essay for the prize for nearly three weeks or more (the boys here don’t know that) or I should have written before; and so, just to please them, I’m sitting up late and writing to-night instead of day after to-morrow.
They expect it will be the most tremendous fun that ever was, and of course it will. I’m rather tired of playing tricks, but they say this isn’t playing tricks at all. In your last letter you asked me if the boys were the same rum old poligars that they used to be. I don’t know what that means, Henry, but I guess the boys are just the same—only worse. Well, Henry, I guess I’ll try and give you a better idea of them than I did when I was with you. You know all their names; so first there is Charley. He is a capital good sort of a fellow, and he often helps me. But he is a very queer sort of a fellow, and he thinks it’s tremendous big fun to use big words when he talks with us—well, so do the others. It seems natural for George to use them, but I don’t know why Steve does. I expect he thinks it’s tremendous big fun too.
Stephen is a great fellow to play tricks. My father says if he lives, and keeps on at this rate, he and the law will meet with violence some of these days.
But I hope Stephen will never get into such trouble. He makes us laugh more than all the other boys put together, and I expect when you come down and we get fairly started rescuing the captive, we’ll laugh ourselves sick in bed. Marmaduke, he’s the one, is not to see you till in the haunted house.
Charley likes to have me tell him stories about the demon. Marmaduke—he’s the next one to tell about. We boys are not very well satisfied with the way we get on in French. We haven’t a genuine Frenchman for a master, as you have. We all like Mr. Meadows, but he has not the knack of making us understand French, though he is a splendid teacher in other things. But the boys all say that Marmaduke is satisfied.
Because he can write “A red-haired sailor dressed in blue says the physician’s house is burnt,” “The king’s palace is built on the river,” “The neighbor’s wicked little boy has stolen the carpenter’s hammer,” and so on, he thinks he and the French language understand each other. Mr. Meadows himself isn’t satisfied with the Method he uses. One boy here says the reason he doesn’t get a better one is because he studied it when he was a boy, and, etc., etc. But that is a very mean thing to say, eh, Henry? and I don’t believe it a bit. That’s the reason we want you to come, to write us a good letter in French. George is a nice boy. He always says, look here, boys, when he has something on his mind. He reads a great deal, but it doesn’t spoil him from being a boy a bit. Ask him what he reads, and he’ll say, Oh, anything from an almanac to an unabridged dictionary, and I expect that is so. Marmaduke is just the wildest boy in his notions that I ever saw. The boys mean to take advantage of this, and delude him. But I have explained all that. Jim always, generally, goes with us, and he is the most first-rate coward that I ever saw. We’ve shut him out this time. But he is a nice fine boy in lots of things.
In reading over what I’ve written I’m afraid I haven’t explained our plot at all, Henry; but it’s too long to explain now, because I’m tired, Henry, and I expect to see you soon, Henry, and then I can explain it better than I could in writing. Perhaps I’ve written too much about the boys, but you know just how much I think of them. They are all good fellows and we would do almost anything for each other. We don’t care much for the other boys here, only ourselves. I can tell you this much about our plot, we pretend to rescue a prisoner out of an old house. George calls it the necropolis, and Charley the scare-crow’s factory; but Stephen has a better name—at least, it sounds better. He calls it the Wigwam of the Seven Sleepers. Last time I forgot to ask you to excuse my writing, so I might as well now, this time. I’m too tired to write any more this time, and my letter is pretty long, anyway. Don’t wait to write again, but come as soon as possible next week, for our plot will come off as soon as possible.
I am, I was, and I always mean to be,
Your Sleepy Cousin Will.